Dan Simmons is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works which span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes within a single novel. Simmons's genre-intermingling Song of Kali (1985) won the World Fantasy Award. He also writes mysteries and thrillers, some of which feature the continuing character Joe Kurtz.
Pulp magazines were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was 7 inches (18 cm) wide by 10 inches (25 cm) high, and 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century.
Carl Richard Jacobi was an American journalist and writer. He wrote short stories in the horror and fantasy genres for the pulp magazine market, appearing in such pulps of the bizarre and uncanny as Thrilling, Ghost Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and Strange Stories. He also wrote stories crime and adventure which appeared in such pulps as Thrilling Adventures, Complete Stories, Top-Notch, Short Stories, The Skipper, Doc Savage and Dime Adventures Magazine. Jacobi also produced some science fiction, mainly space opera, published in such magazines as Planet Stories. He was one of the last surviving pulp-fictioneers to have contributed to the legendary American horror magazine Weird Tales during its "glory days". His stories have been translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch.
Carcosa is a fictional city in Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1886). The ancient and mysterious city is barely described and is viewed only in hindsight by a character who once lived there.
Hugh Barnett Cave was an American writer of various genres, perhaps best remembered for his works of horror, weird menace and science fiction. Cave was one of the most prolific contributors to pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s, selling an estimated 800 stories not only in the aforementioned genres but also in western, fantasy, adventure, crime, romance and non-fiction. He used a variety of pen names, notably Justin Case under which name he created the antihero The Eel. A war correspondent during World War II, Cave afterwards settled in Jamaica where he owned and managed a coffee plantation and continued his writing career, now specializing in novels as well as fiction and non-fiction sales to mainstream magazines.
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, poet, editor, and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. He wrote numerous dark fantasy and horror stories. As an editor, he created a three-volume set of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian fiction restored to its original form as written, and edited the long-running and genre-defining The Year's Best Horror Stories series for DAW Books. His Carcosa publishing company issued four volumes of the best stories by some of the major authors of the so-called Golden Age pulp magazines. He is possibly best known for his creation of a series of stories featuring the character Kane, the Mystic Swordsman.
Manly Wade Wellman was an American writer. While his science fiction and fantasy stories appeared in such pulps as Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Unknown and Strange Stories, Wellman is best remembered as one of the most popular contributors to the legendary Weird Tales and for his fantasy and horror stories set in the Appalachian Mountains, which draw on the native folklore of that region. Karl Edward Wagner referred to him as "the dean of fantasy writers." Wellman also wrote in a wide variety of other genres, including historical fiction, detective fiction, western fiction, juvenile fiction, and non-fiction.
Laird Samuel Barron is an American author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror, noir, and dark fantasy genres. He has also been the managing editor of the online literary magazine Melic Review. He lives in Upstate New York.
Whispers was one of the new horror and fantasy fiction magazines of the 1970s.
Dennis William Etchison was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. Etchison referred to his own work as "rather dark, depressing, almost pathologically inward fiction about the individual in relation to the world". Stephen King has called Dennis Etchison "one hell of a fiction writer" and he has been called "the most original living horror writer in America".
Lee Brown Coye was an American artist.
"Sticks" is a short story by horror fiction writer Karl Edward Wagner, first published in the March 1974 issue of Whispers. It has been reprinted in several anthologies, including the revised edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, indicating that it is part of the Cthulhu Mythos genre.
Fedogan & Bremer is a weird fiction specialty publishing house founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1985 by Philip Rahman and Dennis Weiler. The name comes from the nicknames of the two founders when they were in college.
The Door Below is a collection of fantasy and horror and mystery short stories by author Hugh B. Cave. It was released in 1997 by Fedogan & Bremer in an edition of 1,100 copies, of which 100 were signed by the author. Many of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Horror Stories, Spicy Mystery Stories, Detective Fiction Weekly, Terror Tales, Fantasy Tales, Whispers, Crypt of Cthulhu, Shudder Stories, Borderland, Phantasm and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
Exorcisms and Ecstasies is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by author Karl Edward Wagner. The collection also includes a number of memoirs and articles about Wagner and is edited by Stephen Jones. It was released in 1997 by Fedogan & Bremer in an edition of 2,100 copies, of which 100 included Wagner's signature taken from a canceled check or contract. The limited edition was also signed by the artist, editor and other contributors to the collection. Many of the stories originally appeared in a number of different anthologies and collections or in the magazines Beyond Fantasy & Science Fiction, Kadath, Weird Tales, The Centralite, Midnight Sun, Fantasy Crossroads and Gauntlet.
Worse Things Waiting is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by American writer Manly Wade Wellman, with illustrations by Lee Brown Coye. It was released in 1973 by Carcosa in an edition of 2,867 copies, of which 536 pre-ordered copies were signed by the author and artist. Many of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Weird Tales, Strange Stories, Unknown, and Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Far Lands, Other Days is a collection of fantasy, horror and mystery short stories by author E. Hoffmann Price. It was released in 1975 by Carcosa in an edition of 2,593 copies of which 615 copies, that were pre-ordered, were signed by the author and artist. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Weird Tales, Strange Detective Stories, Spicy-Adventure Stories, Golden Fleece, Argosy, Spicy Mystery Stories, Strange Stories, Short Stories, Terror Tales and Speed Mystery.
Murgunstrumm and Others is a collection of horror short stories by author Hugh B. Cave. It was released in 1977 by Carcosa in an edition of 2,578 copies of which the 597 copies, that were pre-ordered, were signed by the author and artist. Many of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Weird Tales, Spicy Mystery Stories, Ghost Stories, Thrilling Mysteries, Black Book Detective Magazine, Argosy, Adventure, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Whispers. It has since been reissued by Wildside Press in trade paperback and hardcover.
Lonely Vigils is a collection of fantasy, horror and mystery short stories by American author Manly Wade Wellman. It was released in 1981 by Carcosa in an edition of 1,548 copies, of which the 566 pre-ordered copies were signed by the author and artist. The stories feature Wellman's supernatural detective characters, Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, Professor Nathan Enderby, and John Thunstone. The story "Vigil" first appeared in the magazine Strange Stories. The remaining stories originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
